


Contradictions

by writer_bird



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Latin, M/M, Ronan Lynch Swears, Ronan Lynch doesn't lie, Ronan Lynch is Bad at Feelings, Someone just give these kids hugs already, Unknowable Adam Parrish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26233573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writer_bird/pseuds/writer_bird
Summary: Ronan follows Adam home because he's curious. He doesn't like what he finds.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	Contradictions

Ronan Lynch was a sea of contradictions. A blazing sun and an icy tundra simultaneously existed and raged within him, battling for control, battering each other, unable to ever fully wear the other down. Contradictions. He was a dreamer, yet he was vividly, painfully awake. Contradictions. He cradled his baby bird in his hands, cognizant of her fragile bones, yet he road-raced, tires grinding, gears shifting, the smell of gasoline in his nostrils. Contradictions. Destruction and peace warred within him and often only agreed when he was drunk as hell.

Contradictions.

He paid no attention to school or any of his fellow students - why should he watch them, pay any attention to them, he had his own life, and they had theirs - and yet…

He watched Adam Parrish.

That was the greatest contradiction of them all. Why did Ronan Lynch, the epitome of disdain and haughtiness, deign to look upon the mortals and out of all of them, fix his gaze on Adam Parrish?

A question Ronan himself couldn’t answer.

While Ronan was a sea of contradictions, Parrish was just one. One great contradiction, but if you looked at him, you would never know it.

He was a desert.

Wind blew across it once in a while, stirring the grains of sand, swirling up and revealing the true fire and danger of the desert, but most often everything was hidden. Hidden behind a facade of calm, of peace, of quiet.

No one saw how scorching the sand could be until they stood on it too long.

Contradictions

Ronan made a game of watching Parrish, the peculiar creature he couldn’t quite understand.

Parrish was quiet. He kept to himself. He spoke rarely, only to answer questions in class. It was in Latin class when he really came alive, and Ronan knew why. In all the other classes, Parrish was uncontested for the number one place among the students. He passed every test with apparent ease, although Ronan saw how he came to school eyes lined with shadows, and Ronan suspected that Parrish didn’t glide through school with quite the ease he wanted everyone to believe.

But in Latin class, he had to work for it.  _ Visibly _ .

That was Ronan’s fault.

Ronan threw himself into Latin like he did no other class. He dug into the language with both hands, getting the dirt of it beneath his fingernails. It was more than a want to know the language. It was a  _ need _ . The creatures in his dreams, the trees themselves, spoke it, and so he had to too.

For once, Adam Parrish didn’t succeed easily at a class. He wasn’t on the top, not in Latin.

Ronan could see how much it annoyed Parrish, and he delighted in it. For once, in that one class, unlike all others, the other boy came out of his shell of meekness. He stopped tugging the sleeves of his slightly worn uniform, stopped speaking quite so carefully. Glared at Ronan over debates about participles. Snapped when Ronan corrected him.

A stranger, Parrish was. Strange. Ronan was determined to understand him, but he wouldn’t do it the easy way. The easy way was not the Lynch way.

No, Ronan had to maintain his carefully manufactured disdain. Watch. Wait. Learn.

And then Gansey came to school with Parrish in the Pig. In the passenger seat. Ronan had driven to school himself that day, early to catch Kavinsky on the road and race before school.

Gansey said that the Pig had been broken down and Parrish had stopped. To help.

When Gansey introduced Parrish and Ronan, Ronan swept a carefully impartial gaze over Parrish, curling his lip a little and saying nothing. Gansey couldn’t just pick up friends on the side of the road. That wasn’t how it worked.

To Ronan, friends were ride or die. They weren’t something you could just pick up easily, adding to the collection.

That mentality was why Ronan didn’t have any friends. Gansey didn’t count as a friend; Gansey was a brother.

“Come on,” Gansey said to Ronan later. “There was no need for that.”

“No need for what?” Ronan snapped, all venom.

“The way you looked at him. That was uncalled for.”

A surge of anger reared its head inside Ronan. He didn’t know what for.

And yet, a part of him did.

Gansey was replacing him. He was moving on, he was choosing another, and that was it, and he was going to leave Ronan behind just like his dad had, and-

Ronan had to learn more about Adam Parrish. It was no longer a want, it was a need. The next day after school, Parrish left Aglionby via bicycle.

Another layer to the mystery. No one able to afford to go to Aglionby didn’t own a car, and a damn expensive one at that. The bike, and the worn sleeves of Parrish’s uniform…

Ronan was curious. Maybe today he would figure out a little bit of the enigma that was Adam Parrish.

He followed in Declan’s borrowed car at a leisurely pace, in that car so Parrish wouldn’t recognize him. Declan had put up a fuss, but really, what could he do? Ronan said he was using it to go to school, and that was, after all, all Declan wanted.

Ronan followed Parrish down the streets that he knew so well, that were always more beautiful at night and when there was alcohol coursing through his veins and when the stars mocked him.

Followed Parish as he turned into a side dirt road, peddling smoothly on his bicycle.

Ronan hadn’t been down this road before. It wound its way, dust flying up onto the front of Ronan’s sleek car.

It was a trailer park. Double wides.

What was perfect, quiet, neat Parrish doing in a trailer park? He stuck out like a sore thumb.

And then- he didn’t.

Ronan saw the moment it happened. Parrish’s shoulders curled in. His head ducked. He became someone - some _ thing _ \- else. Still Parrish. But distant. Well, more distant. He set the bike down carefully.

Ronan recognized that body language, even from a distance. Parrish was stalling. Wary.

Why?

Parrish chained up the bike. Ronan was too far away to see, but he knew that there were Parrish’s long fingers, all knuckles and bones, streaked with grease.

Parrish stood. His dust hair faded into the dust ground and dust walls of the trailers around him. The double wide facing him, squat and looming at once. He faded in until he was just another tree, another dust cloud, another piece of the landscape.

Ronan was having a hard time putting these two Parrishes together in his head. The two Parrishes he knew. Well, three, really.

The Parrish who blazed in Latin, whose eyes were all fire and determination, whose words were firecrackers.

The Parrish who tried to hide in the halls of Aglionby. Who watched his words carefully - hell if Ronan knew why - and tugged at his sleeves. Who spoke quietly, who ducked his head and straightened his tie.

And now. This Parrish.

Contradictions.

The Parrish who stood in front of the double wide trailer. Hands in pockets. Looking at it. His back was to Ronan but Ronan could see the tension in his body, just for a second, before he released it. Almost as if he was giving in. He blended into everything. A spot in history, no, less than a spot.

It made Ronan want to slam the doors of the BMW, and then again, and then again until the glass shattered.

He didn’t know why.

And then Parrish entered the trailer. Mounting each step carefully. Unlocking the door.

It closed behind him.

There was a bad taste in Ronan’s mouth. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t what he was supposed to uncover about Adam Parrish.

So he lived in a trailer park. So? Fucking who cared?

That wasn’t the truth. Not the one Ronan was looking for.

Ronan lived for the truth. It was the truth or nothing.  _ All _ or nothing. He’d set out to find out the real Adam Parrish, and been presented with a dusty lie.

A lie.

The BMW door slammed behind him. He took the stairs two at a time.

His fist was thunder on the door.

It flew open.

A tall man framed in the doorway. Thick set. His face was red.

“What?” he snapped. His eyes swept Ronan. Taking in the rumpled Aglionby Academy uniform, the untied tie, sweeping past Ronan to the BMW parked a bit away from the trailer.

Behind him stood Parrish, almost stock still, a plastic plate in one hand. Staring at Ronan - or at the man? Hard to tell.

A slight woman stood in the background, one hand on a countertop. She too watched.

Ronan wasn’t sure what his plan had been.

“Who the hell are you?” the man in front of Ronan said.

Ronan found himself running through a boxing move he’d been practicing with Declan last week in his head for no reason at all.

“One of those bastards from that stuck up school?” the man continued. His gaze flicked over to Parrish. “You didn’t tell you you had a  _ friend _ coming over.” In his mouth, friend meant something entirely different.

“I-” Parrish looked out of words. His eyes, looking at Ronan were… missing something. This was the third Parrish’s gaze. Not Latin Parrish. Not even Aglionby Parrish.

This was dust Parrish.

This was a mistake.

Ronan hovered.

Contradictions.

The desire to know burned inside him like fierce liquor.

The urge to stop, stop stop stop stop warred against his want to know.

There was something about this situation.

It was a storm cloud on the verge of discharge.

Every instinct, every measure of his impulse control that Gansey claimed he didn’t have, was tingling. This was a street race, and Ronan was woefully unequipped.

Who was he racing?

Didn’t matter.

Danger loomed.

“Hey, man,” Ronan said. Casual. Leaning against the doorframe. “I was in the neighborhood.” Not a lie. “Want to ask. You coming to study group tomorrow?”

He’d heard Gansey mention it offhand. Begging Ronan to be there.  _ You can’t get expelled, Ronan _ , Ronan thought his exact words were.

Parrish swallowed. His eyes, darting to the man in front of Ronan, who Ronan was determinedly ignoring.

Ronan was starting to put two and two together.

“Yeah,” Parrish said.

“Great.” Ronan thumped a fist on the side of the doorframe, pushing off it. Nodding to the man - who must’ve been Parrish Senior. Nodding to the woman behind Parrish.

The air crackled. No one moved.

He left.

Ronan was closing the BMW’s door when a hand caught it and stopped it. He looked up.

Parrish.

This wasn’t dust Parrish. This was Latin Parrish, and he was burning.

“What the hell was that, Lynch?” he hissed.

“What?” Ronan asked.

“You- showing up-” A strangled breath forced itself out of Parrish’s lips. “Did you follow me?”

“Yes.” It was not the Lynch way to soften the truth.

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

Ronan lifted a shoulder and dropped it. If he couldn’t explain it to himself he certainly couldn’t to Parrish.

“Don’t do that again,” Parrish said. “Okay? We’re not- we’re not friends.” He drew back a little. Became a little more Aglionby Parrish. He seemed surprised he’d said that.

Ronan twisted a poison smirk. “Of course.” He glanced at Parrish’s hand. “Will you let go of my car?”

Parrish didn’t let go.

“Is there something else?” Ronan asked.

He was dust Parrish again.

Ronan wondered when the change had happened. If he’d missed it, if he’d blinked and it had transpired, or if it had been too fast even for that.

Contradictions.

There  _ was  _ something else. Ronan knew it like he knew what the trees whispered to him at night.

“What?” he asked. Impatient. It was not the Lynch way to be patient.

Parrish’s gaze slid past Ronan, slid past the BMW, slid to the trailer.

The man’s face in the window.

Parrish’s face tightened.

And just like that, Ronan knew where dust Parrish came from.

He wanted to break something.

Hurt something.

And he knew what Parrish wanted to say.

“Calm your ass,” Ronan said. His voice casual. His eyes, on Parrish’s face, anything but. “I’m not telling anyone you don’t live in a great big mansion, Parrish. That’s your shit to deal with.”

Parrish’s eyes were still on the trailer.

Dust Parrish.

Ronan could tell he didn’t believe him.

“Fuck, man, don’t you know I never lie?”

He still didn’t believe him.

“Adam,” Ronan said.

Eyes left the trailer and met Ronan’s.

Dust Parrish was gone.

“What?” Adam asked. Quietly. His eyes were alive.

Contradictions.

“Fuck him,” Ronan said. Quietly. His fingers itched to move the way they did when the open street stretched before him. “No, fuck everyone.”

“I- excuse me?”

“So you live in a trailer. Big fucking wahoo.”

A complicated expression warred on Adam’s face. After a minute, he said, “Technically that’s incorrect.”

“What?”

“Double wide,” Adam said. “Not trailer.” He paused, and then- “ _ Homo tam fatuus es _ .”

The air burned.

Parrish stood there, outlined against the dirt and dust and brownness.

Not dust Parrish. Not Aglionby Parrish. Not even Latin Parrish.

Just him. Adam Parrish.

Ronan quirked a smile. “ _ Semper sum _ .”

It was electric.

Adam Parrish stepped back from the BMW. Released the door. “See you at school, then?” It was an offering. A question.  _ Now what? _

Ronan gripped the steering wheel. It felt like danger. “ _ Consilium bene est _ .”

Contradictions.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> my friend who's been studying latin for years helped, so google translate might not work perfectly. Here's the translation for what they said:
> 
> You’re an idiot
> 
> I always am
> 
> That’s a good plan.


End file.
